MLA citation was expected to be used in my high school courses, but it was never fully drilled into our heads as to how it needed to look or be done. I think coming into English 110 I was underprepared when it came time to use MLA guidelines. Schools and classes, to me, try to push bigger things like a strong thesis and proper grammar instead of trying to start from the beginning. How are you supposed to build a good paper if the foundation isn’t strong enough? You can’t. Your sources fall through and your argument isn’t solid. Even more basic, if the heading looks sloppy then why should someone take the time to read the paper? It’s the base of everything yet I was never taught it in full. 

In my first paper, I hardly cited my sources when I put in quotes and paraphrases. In my heading, I put the wrong date as well as forgot to put page numbers. It was a mess. For my chosen paper, however, I made sure to go and include citations where there needed to be citations and see that the heading was correct. In the end, it felt like my paper had taken on another level of professionalism. My quotes didn’t form out of thin air, my overall look was clean, and I gave credit where credit was due. I will say that the books assigned for the class came in handy when I wanted to know how to format my quote introductions and citations. Here’s an example of one of my citations: 

Pollan touches this idea in his writing when he reminds us that, “After World War II, the food industry labored mightily to sell…all the processed-food wonders it had invented…: canned meals, freeze-dried foods, dehydrated potatoes, powdered orange juice and coffee, instant everything” (Pollan 15).

When it came down to making revisions for things surrounding sentence error, I didn’t tend to have to do much. At most, I would have to cut down on fancy language or long, multipart sentences. Getting to the point was something I had to work on this second paper, and in the end, I think I managed to hone in a lot more than I did in my first paper.